A great weight fell from my shoulders when I received your
letter, which put an end to thoughts of “internecine
war”. The more this last seemed inevitable the greater the gloom such
thoughts aroused, since the consequences for the Party would be most
unfortunate....

I shall be very glad, when we meet, to have a talk with you about the beginning
of the “affair” in
Munich,[2] not, of course, to rehash
the past, but to discover for myself what it was that offended
you at the time. That I had no intention of offending you, you are of course
aware.

V. I. has shown me also your letter about the article, i.e., your proposal to be
given an opportunity of expressing your opinion in your programmatic
article. Personally, I am inclined to consider such a decision the best and I
think that the possibility of registering a 25 per cent difference (if it has to
be registered at all) has always existed for each of the co-editors (just as you
have already mentioned a somewhat different formulation of the question of
nationalisation in the same article—or of the liberals in the review in
Zarya No. 2–3). I am ready now, of course, to discuss with you once
again desirable alterations in my
article[1]
and I shall send you the proofs for
this purpose. Select anything you like. We ought to finish Zarya as quickly
as possible; as it is the negotiations are dragging out terribly. In any
case. I shall at once inform both
A. N. and Julius of your proposal.

I have not yet received the proofs of your article and so cannot answer your
question about the passage on Marx.

The letter of a
Socialist-Revolutionary,[3] in my opinion, is hardly
worth publishing; they have their own press—let them polemise there (for
that’s what it is with them—sheer polemics). About Belgium, it would
be good to publish Rosa Luxemburg’s article, if this could be done
quickly.

Notes

[2]Lenin refers to the beginning of the disagreements in connection with the
drafting of the Party programme, the first discussion
of which took place at a meeting of the Iskra editorial board in
Munich on January 21, 1902. At this meeting Lenin sharply criticized the
first draft of the programme drawn up by Plekhanov and submitted his own
amendments and proposals. p. 104

[3]Socialist-Revolutionaries (S.R.s)—a petty-bourgeois party in
Russia, formed at the end of 1901 and beginning of 1902 through the
amalgamation of various Narodnik groups and circles. The S.R.s saw no class
distinctions between the proletariat and the peasantry, glossed over the
class differentiation and antagonism within the peasantry and denied the
leading role of the proletariat in the revolution. The tactics of
individual terrorism which the S.R.s advocated as the principal method of
fighting the autocracy caused great harm to the revolutionary movement and
made it difficult to organise the masses for revolutionary struggle.

The agrarian programme of the S.R.s envisaged the abolition of private
ownership of the land and its transfer to the village communes on the basis
of equalised tenure, as well as the development of all forms of
co-operation. There was nothing socialistic in this programme, which the
S.R.s sought to present as a programme for “socialising the
land”, since abolition of private ownership of the land alone, Lenin
pointed out, cannot abolish the poverty of the masses.

The Bolsheviks exposed the S.R.s’ attempts to pose as socialists,
fought hard with them for influence over the peasantry and showed how
harmful their tactics of individual terrorism were to the working-class
movement. At the same time, they were prepared, on certain conditions, to
make temporary agreements with the S.R.s in the struggle against tsarism.

The absence of class homogeneousness among the peasantry was responsible
for the political and ideological instability and the organisational
confusion in the S.R. party, and for its constant vacillation between the
liberal bourgeoisie and the proletariat. There had been a split in the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party during the first Russian revolution, its
Right wing forming the legal Trudovik Popular Socialist Party, which held
views close to those of the Cadets, and the Left wing taking shape as the
semi-anarchist league of Maximalists. During the years of reaction
(1907-10) the S.R. party suffered a complete ideological and organisational
break-down, and the First World War found most of the S.R.s taking a
social-chauvinist stand.

After the victory of the February bourgeois-democratic revolution in 1917
the S.R.s, together with the Mensheviks and Cadets, were the mainstay of
the counter-revolutionary Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie and
landowners (the party’s leaders Kerensky, Avksentyev and Chernov were
members of that government). The Left wing of the S.R.s founded an
independent party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries at the end of November
1917. In an effort to maintain their influence among the peasant masses,
the Left S.R.s formally recognised the Soviet
power and entered into an agreement with the Bolsheviks, but shortly
afterwards turned against the Soviet power.

During the foreign military intervention and civil war the S.R.s carried on
subversive counter-revolutionary activities, strongly supported the
interventionists and whiteguards, took part in counter-revolutionary plots,
and organised terrorist acts against leaders of the Soviet state and the
Communist Party. After the civil war, the S.R.s continued their hostile
activity against the Soviet state. p. 105

[4]Lenin met his mother in France, and not in Germany. From the second half of
June to July 25, 1902, Lenin lived at Loguivy (Northern coast of France)
with his mother and his sister A. I. Ulyanova-Yelizarova. p. 105